A company's claim it wants a new West Coast mine to be carbon dioxide emissions neutral is amateurish greenwash, the environmentalist Bob Brown Foundation says.
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Venture Minerals Limited managing director Andrew Radonjic on Monday said the company aimed for its potential Mount Lindsay tin and tungsten mine near Tullah to have a "zero carbon footprint".
He said that would be done through mining underground - which would be less disruptive than open cut mining - using electric underground vehicles and renewable hydro energy and returning waste material underground through a paste fill system.
Bob Brown Foundation takayna/Tarkine campaigner Scott Jordan said: "It's about the rainforests, stupid."
"Venture plans to erase a huge area of carbon rich, ancient rainforest for a mine with an eight-year life, and they want us to believe that them tinkering with vehicle emissions will balance the ledger?
"The rainforest carbon stores that Venture will release at Mount Lindsay have built over millennia.
"Wet temperate rainforests - and Mt Lindsay represents some of the best - are among the most carbon dense forests on the planet.
"You can't fix that by changing your trucks.
"If Venture was serious about a carbon neutral future they would walk away from projects in takayna /Tarkine at Mount Lindsay and abandon plans to clear the remaining three strip mine stages at Riley Creek.
"Everything else is snake oil."
Environmentalists have protested against Venture's Riley iron ore mine on the West Coast and in Burnie, from where the ore is being exported.
Mr Radonjic acknowledged what he described as a "quite dramatic" fall in iron ore prices in recent times, noting issues with steel production in China and the effects of the Delta variant of coronavirus causing transport congestion.
"Trying to understand the iron ore market is a challenge," Mr Radonjic said.
He expected steel production would pick up, aiding iron ore prices.